


The Gravedigger

by APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone/pseuds/APermanentResidentOfTheFriendzone
Summary: He is now among the damned, the lost, and the incorrigible.They're not good. But maybe they can do good things?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This show's pretty interesting. I like seeing what we can do with it.

In life, Hayden had always loved to dig.

A simple action, but one that he loved. It was his closest friend growing up. When people, other activities, and the rest of the world seemed to fail him, it and it's personally therapeutic nature called to him, never ceasing to make him feel better after a bad day.

When he was going through preschool, the small sandbox used by the place was where you could always find him, often times he would be ignoring the caregiver's calling him, even when his parents had been there for several minutes, ready to take him home. But with his young mind's way of thinking, there was no sandbox at home, so why leave?

The same applied whenever they went to the beach. Despite having been taught how to, Hayden almost never actually went swimming. No, his attentions were captured by the sand, and he went digging for hours on end, priding himself on creating the most elaborate and elegant sand castles he could. They weren't world-changing admittedly, but they made for great pictures. 

He continued on with his passion as he grew up, even with people from school teasing him about it. With his coming age, his passion became useful for something more than just fun, and whenever there was house and yard work to be done that involved digging, Hayden eagerly jumped to get it done, it being the only of his chores able to elicit a smile from him, as opposed to the usual rolling eyes and inward groans. Eventually, once he gained a desire to earn get his own money for his own frivolous childhood desires, he set out to work for his neighbors, getting paid to perform basic tasks they as adults weren't quite so keen on doing. 

It was this that led to his death.

A man named Rick, a friend of the family for years, had recently purchased a house in the middle of a dense forest grove. The homestead, while large, spacious, and homely, needed a plethora of modern renovations, and at the mention of digging being required for several of them, Hayden didn't hesitate to offer his services to his old friend. 

They worked together on the project for months, most of them during summer, as Hayden didn't have the time during the day to help when he was in high school. And it was there, in the middle of a sweltering hot, mid-July day (even worse in the grove, since the trees blocked so much of the cooling breeze), that it happened.

They were working on digging trenches that day (no, not that kind). Rick needed Hayden to dig long, narrow holes into the dirt protruding from the homestead. Something about installing underground cables for things like electricity. It was overall nothing really exciting, and pretty simple, so Rick figured someone like Hayden could be left to his own devices when doing this, and so he proceeded to give Hayden the go-ahead to get busy, and went back into the house to get to work on another of the endless projects he had going on. 

Shaking his head fondly at the man's scheduling habits, Hayden quickly got to work on the trench. He took great care with how he started, a good habit of his, as it allowed him to set up a good template. If the template was good, then the rest of the trench would be good as well. But just as he was about to plunge his shovel down one last time in order to reach the optimal depth, something caught his attention. A small series of chirps, not too far away from him, up in the trees.

Looking towards the sound's origin, he smiled. A small blue-jay, likely searching out a spot to nest, stared back at him, neither knowing the other would be last living thing they saw.

He admired animals in their simplicity. They never really desired more than the bare minimum of what they needed to live, and they were happy with that. Or, maybe the better word was satisfied. Happiness wasn't exactly easy to spot in birds.

It was in this absentminded musing of his that he finally drove the shovel downwards, raising and stomping his foot on top of it to really drive the blade home. But instead of the usual sound of shifting of dirt and clay, he heard something else. It sounded...metallic. Like his shovel hadn't only struck dirt. 

Looking back down, he saw that he'd uncovered an old pipe, looking derelict and obsolete, like it came from the 60's, the first third of his shovel embedded deep inside of it. 

The last thing he saw was the explosive warning sign next to the hole the shovel had created.

He had partially turned himself away from the hole when looking at the bird, so only one half of his body was exposed. The pipe instantaneously combusted, sending Hayden off his feet as a flurry of shards entered him. The concussive force of the explosion broke his neck, but not before the shrapnel had cut through his face and punctured his brain, killing him instantly, all the while the entire right side of his body burning, as he landed on his back. It only took about three seconds. His life had ended thankfully quick. 

Miraculously, none of the shrapnel had cut his eyes, leaving both vacant and intact, but it did nothing to cull the horror Rick experienced, who had rushed back over upon hearing the explosion. The same could be said for everyone else.

So now, Hayden was in death. He'd sometimes pondered on what that would bring. He'd been brought up in a world that was seldom able to agree upon the fate of the lost, and he'd never really given much thought onto what he would believe. 

At first, he'd expected to just float.

You could imagine his surprise when he started to fall.

The first thing he saw was a dark-red cloud. Odd. He hadn't expected that. But he couldn't dwell on for much longer as he quickly rushed through the thing. There were other things to be seen for sure, but nothing was visible to Hayden, as he was falling too fast, and it wasn't long before the ground rushed up to meet him. 

He braced for impact, but to his further surprise, he didn't feel any pain from it. Shakily, he stood, and looked around, dumbstruck. It was quite clear he wasn't in Canada anymore. 

The sky was red, red as blood. The people that surrounded him were horrifically disfigured, some seemingly anthropomorphic animals.

"What's the matter, asshole? You look like you've just seen a ghost." Hayden whirled around at the sound of the voice, immediately terrified at the owner of the voice, a gruesome creature dressed in black, standing heads and shoulders above him. His breath caught in his throat, Hayden found himself without a response. 

The.............. _man_ chuckled. "I get it. You just arrived. Welcome to Hell, kid. It's horrible here." he said swinging his arm out at all the buildings in the distance, before shoving Hayden to the ground and moving past him, laughing to himself. 

Hayden was thrown even further into disbelief, despite the fact that he'd just been given clarification. 

Hell. He was in Hell.

He then noticed a storefront window across the street. Apparently, Hell had retail stores. Not what he was told earlier. Dashing across the street, he looked into the window, seeing the TV's on display (Hell had television), showcasing a pair of news anchors (Hell had news?) talking about some gang violence going earlier that day (at least that could be expected. Sort of.). But then Hayden spotted his reflection in the glass, and was horrified at what stared back. 

Much like the others he had seen, Hayden's body had been mutilated. He'd gotten taller, originally being about 5'6", now having grown another eleven inches. His extremities had thinned out, becoming a lot more wiry. His face had been asymmetrically split, the upper left half having turned grey, but was otherwise normal, while the bottom right half, which included his nose, was now riddled with scars, both the sharper more defined lines left by the shrapnel that had initially killed him, and the hideous scarring left by the 3rd-degree burns had turned the entire exposed side of his skin black. 

The scars continued down the right side of his body. The plaid shirt he'd been wearing when he died had remained with him, but Hell had twisted it into it's own perversion. The colours of the thing had changed, becoming an amalgam of red and black, with the slightest hints of white throughout. The right sleeve had been burned and torn away, the entire forearm gone. A remnant of the explosion, the exposed skin of his arm just as scarred and ugly as his face had become. And meanwhile, just like his face, his left arm was almost completely undamaged, the sleeve completely intact, the skin having turned grey. 

His shirt had also changed. At first it was only plain white with no pictures or words on it. Now? A large, black pentagram sat emblazoned onto the fabric, matching the gigantic pentagram he'd seen up in the sky. 

His pants, a pair of plain jeans, thankfully hadn't been altered, beyond a few tears in the right leg of the strong fabric, as well as a layer of ash on the left leg that seemed baked onto the thing, despite the desperate attempts he later made to get it off.

But what had he become?

Hayden felt himself begin to hyperventilate. Try as he might, he just couldn't reconcile himself with this, th-this _thing_ that now stared back at him.

He started running, with no sense of direction nor clue where he even wanted to go, but he had to get away from that reflection. After a few minutes of running non-stop, with no shortage of people cursing at him for shoving them out of his way, he found himself near a small construction site, a shovel leaning against a stack of girders among other various tools. Without thinking, he snatched the shovel, it's long handle familiar in his grasp, and he set off running again, eventually coming into a gigantic field of oddly healthy-looking grass and soil. Realizing he had found an optimal spot, with nobody in his near vicinity, he desperately dug a hole that was deep and wide enough for him to fit in for him to fit inside. He finished it swiftly, actually a lot faster than he'd ever dug anything. Had death made him stronger or something? He wasn't thinking straight though, so he didn't consider this yet.

Tossing the shovel in along with him, Hayden dropped into the hole he'd just finished. It was there that he spent his first night in Hell, curled up into a ball, rocking himself back and forth, struggling to come to terms with his new situation. 

It was good that he stayed somewhere that was familiar and safe to him. It kept him sane. 

When he'd finally calmed down enough to work up the nerve to clamber out of the hole, Hayden set about exploring more of the strangely modern city he found himself in. Whatever he'd been told about Hell in life was a little outdated. Hell's society actually seemed to be just as caught up as Earth's was.

Of course, since it was Hell, after all, that meant it was all the _worst_ aspects of society. Prostitutes and pornography were plentiful, with many of the whores attempting to solicit him, despite the fact that he was a minor. Not that it was easy to tell based on appearance. Then again, it was Hell, maybe some of them _could_ tell and just liked that. Drugs, alcohol, and all the mind-altering substances under the sun could be found as well, and when you weren't buying them from somebody in a literal drugstore (no packs of gum or shitty magazines in these ones), many of them were available in fucking vending machines!

Then, there was the violence. God, the violence. 

You ever hear those jokes about Chicago? How they have 'all-night shooting galleries'? 

'Pentagram City' as Hayden soon learned it was called, put any bad part of a city on Earth to shame. There was no 'bad part' of town. It was _all_ bad. It wasn't just at night that you could hear gunfire echoing in the street, it was literally all the time. It was like The Purge had become a reality, and had been set for every day on the calendar. The first few days after his arrival had already seen him caught in about half a dozen firefights between the gangs and criminals vying for control over each other. 

Hayden had never seen people act with such animosity towards each other. How was this perceived as normal to anybody? As fun? He was horrified at the absolute lack of care shown for life down here, as well as the subsequent lack of respect for the dead shown postmortem. Many spit on the corpse, stole money and other such valuables, and did.............. _other things_ to it as well. He felt horrible.

But it was in this lack of respect for the dead that he discovered his purpose. 

After having escaped from yet another firefight, and the two conflicting factions had cleared off back to whatever rat's nest they came from, Hayden peeked out from his cover behind a car, and was about to hightail it out of there before any more shooting could start. But before he could, he was stopped by a great cry of despair. Turning around, he saw someone had fallen to her knees near one of the bodies. Both of them were the creatures he'd learned to call 'Imps'. 

The woman was clutching onto the dead man, sobbing noisily as she laid her forehead against his, her tail wrapping around his, as if connecting the two in such an intimate way would somehow bring the man back to life. It was so much like people he had seen in life, and it was this that he needed to remember. Bad people they may be. But they were just as vulnerable and human as he was. It was what _made_ them human, really.

It was obvious the two were very close, but Hayden didn't know who he was to her. A lover, a sibling, a mother grieving her now lost son, he didn't know. Nobody knew. Even worse, nobody _cared_. 

But Hayden cared. He would know. And those that didn't care would know. He would make sure of it. 

He honestly hadn't even noticed his legs moving until he had actually reached the imp, kneeling down beside the body and the poor woman clutching him, still sobbing for the man who hadn't even been involved in the shooting, having only been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman then noticed his presence, staring up at him with teary, amber eyes. Hayden looked down at the man, his chest riddled with bullet-holes, all too numerous to count. He then returned her gaze. 

"What was his name?" he asked. That was another thing about him that had changed. His voice. Before, he'd known a very bright, mid-range tenor that he usually kept in a laid-back, easygoing tone, but now, he was projecting a much lower, hissing, breathy rasp. It was still something he was getting used to, much like everything else, but he managed to use a sincere tone when he asked the imp this question.

The imp seemed surprised that he'd asked such a thing. She looked away, her gaze going back to the face of her lost companion. 

"Xander." she sniffed, her voice wobbling as her face threatened to burst into more sobs. 

Hayden nodded, memorizing it to the imp's face. Gently, he then laid his hands underneath the body, using this new strength of his to lift the imp off the ground. 

The female imp was scared at first, thinking he meant to steal him from her. "What are you doing?" she cried, not releasing her grip on the body. Hayden held her gaze calmly, eyes full of a new determination. Determination he had never known in his life or his afterlife so far.

" _I'm going to bury him._ " he answered, gently tugging the body out of her hands, gesturing for her follow as he began his trek back to the field he had spent that first night in. The woman, somehow willing to trust this stranger in a place where trust was a foreign concept, fell in step behind him, hands clasped together tentatively.

Eventually, they reached the field. Gently laying the body down, Hayden stood and surveyed the field. In his original panic upon coming here for the first time, he hadn't actually noticed just how _gigantic_ this field was. That would be helpful. He was going to need a lot of space.

Taking his shovel from where he'd left it from by the hole, he immediately got to work digging the best grave he could manage. It wasn't too complicated. Basic rectangular shape, long and wide enough for the body to lay straight in, and of course, if you've ever heard the saying, exactly six feet deep. The woman watched behind him silently as he worked, almost awestruck at what he was doing. Which was weird, as it was only a random act of kindness, essentially. But of course, Hell. Maybe one day he'd stop being so surprised, but who knew how long it would be till then.

After a few minutes, he was done. It wasn't his best work. The corners were a bit rougher than he'd rather have them, but now wasn't the time for perfectionism. He planted his shovel into the pile of dirt that he'd accumulated beside the grave, dusted off his clothes, stood, and then moved to stand over the body.

Now came the hard part. Carrying the body here was simple. Digging the hole to lay that body into it was even simpler. But.........actually putting him in there. It said a lot more than most think at first. Steeling himself, Hayden knelt down to lift the imp into his arms, being as gentle as possible as he laid him down, as if the body was frail as glass. Pulling himself up out of the grave, Hayden stared back down to the face of the imp. He looked so much more peaceful now. Hopefully, he was doing better wherever he was now. If you even went anywhere else, after this. Hayden hadn't quite figured that out yet.

The woman sniffled beside him. He hadn't even noticed her walk up to the grave next to him. She stared down at the face of her companion as well, and Hayden suddenly felt very much out of place.

"I..." he muttered awkwardly. "...I'll give you some time." he said, turning and walking back away from the grave, hopefully giving the poor woman the space she needed to say her final farewells. 

She said things to him, Hayden wasn't sure what they were. Between the various vague thoughts running through his mind at the time, and the fact that most of her words were muffled by barely choked-back sobs, he couldn't be sure. Eventually, she stopped talking entirely, only quietly weeping for what felt like forever.

"Alright. Fill it in now." she sniffed, backing away slightly, wiping what was left of the tears from her eyes. Obeying, Hayden walked back over. Retrieving his shovel from the mound of dirt, he quickly piled the dirt into the grave, and it was soon filled. He patted the top down, smoothing it out as best he could, and then it was done. 

He suddenly felt a pressure about his thighs. Looking down (a strange feeling for him, he was used to having to look up), he saw the imp had wrapped her arms around his legs, face pressed into the left leg of his jeans. 

"Th-thank you. Thank you so much." she said, slightly muffled by her face pressed against his leg, sounding almost on the verge of tears again.

Hayden patted her shoulder with his undamaged hand, gently caressing the red skin with his thumb. "...It's alright." he replied, after some confusion on how to respond. 

"No, it's not alright!" the woman cried, looking up at him. "I know you must be new here, because nothing like this ever happens in this place!" she continued, grief now being joined by outrage. "Please," she began.

"there has to be something I can do to repay you." she said questioningly, almost demanding in a way. Feeling pressured, Hayden racked his brain, trying to think of something she could do for him. It wasn't as easy as you'd think, if he asked too much, he might hurt the poor woman who'd just lost someone dear to her. But then, something in the city caught his eye. A neon sign, advertising a prominent fast food chain, promoting the restaurant's most famous product, the Hellburger (there was a pattern to naming things here, he was starting to notice). A burger, basically.

One of the last things he'd eaten had been a burger. It had been right before he'd gone to work for Rick. His parents had been bugging him for not taking enough potato salad with it (which wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been the gross kind without the egg in it).

It was a good memory. Something he knew he couldn't take for granted now like he had then.

"Well..." Hayden started, looking back down to the imp, face perking up slightly with anticipation.

"...I am feeling kind of hungry."


	2. Chapter 2

Hellburgers were deceptively tasty, Hayden discovered.

"Are you sure this is all you need?" the imp asked, sitting across from him in the booth.

"This is enough, really. Thank you." Hayden answered, turning his gaze to the diner around him.

It was about as much of a classic diner as you could get. The entire place looked as if it was torn right out of the photographs from the 1950's that Hayden had seen in places like Dairy Queen and A&W when he was a kid. Neon signs were all over the walls, some of them saying words, others a splash of colours creating decorative sigils, a jukebox sat at the opposite corner (the first of vinyl records Hayden had ever seen outside of a thrift shop or his grandparent's house), and of course, brightly coloured seats that were so stiff, they might as well have been sprayed with starch. 

The owner, an oddly affable man with pitch white skin covered in violet pustules, stood behind the diner's bar, cheerfully jawing with the two men who sat on stools in front of him. It was almost endearing. Almost. But then there was the twelve-gauge that never left his hands, brandishing it at anyone who entered the building, which served as an aggressive sign of the consequences of trouble-making. It at least worked. This was easily the most civil place in Hell Hayden had yet known.

He turned back to look down at the food in his hands, frowning. The burger was great, without a doubt, but the marks left by his now much more serrated teeth only served to disturb him. He took another bite, as a distraction more than anything. He chewed gingerly, trying very hard to ignore the feeling of his canines sliding between each other. It proved fruitless. It seemed every little thing about his body would only serve to disturb him now. Just like those over-the-top things they gave him in school for puberty back in eighth grade.

He looked back to the imp, who seemed to be staring at her food as well.

"...So, what's your name?" he asked her, her eyes snapping up to meet his. 

"Elise." she answered. He nodded. "Hayden." he said in kind. "Is it alright to ask who he was to you?" he asked, more tentative this time. She looked away.

"......He..." she began, but then stopped herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "....He was my big brother." she said finally. She put her burger down, arms wrapping around herself. "Thirty years, and you could never have one of us without the other, and now-" she cut off, whatever she was about to say next suddenly caught in the back of her throat. Hayden put his own burger down and leaned forward on the table, offering his hand out to her. The undamaged one. She looked down at it, then to him again, almost analyzing him, before slowly placing her hand in his. He squeezed gently, just as his mother had done for him many times before, always managing to calm him down without fail. He didn't do it as good as her, of course, but it seemed to work.

"Do you have anybody else you can go to?" he asked. She nodded at this.

"My boyfriend. He said he'd always take me in if something happened." she said. He nodded. That would work. The least he could hope for there was that the boyfriend at least wouldn't be abusive. Elise had suffered enough from others today. 

"What about you?" she asked. "I'll be alright. The field's isolated, and that's enough. For now, at least." he replied. Elise frowned again, obviously not liking the answer, but she didn't say anything to it. 

Eventually, the two finished their food and left, accompanied by a hearty farewell from the owner.

"You'll be alright from here?" he asked Elise, concerned. He may not have known much about fighting at this point, but he was still much bigger and stronger than before, which was much more than could be said for the little lady he now parted ways with.

"Yes, I'm fine. Really." she said, smiling up at him. It wasn't a happy smile. She had suffered a terrible tragedy today. But with that smile, she chose to carry on. She showed that she would one day feel better again, despite being damned to this place. 

She wrapped her arms around his legs one last time. "Thank you, Hayden. Thank you so much. I'll never forget this. Never." she said sweetly, before letting him go. Tossing a goodbye over her shoulder, Elise then took off to the other side of the street, eventually disappearing from Hayden's sight. He allowed a small ghost of a smile to appear on his lips. He likely wouldn't forget her, either. 

The smile faded shortly after. Turning around, he faced the vast expanse of Pentagram City as it stretched out before him, the telltale sounds of death never seeming to end. He looked down at his shovel, examining the tool in his grip.

"Let's get back to work." he muttered, heading back to the field. There was much to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much shorter, but I hope it's alright with you.

**Author's Note:**

> It's probably edgy trash. 
> 
> But if you enjoyed it, feel free to let me know.
> 
> Thanks for reading, of course.


End file.
